A-Infos (en) UK, AFed, Organaise - THE NORDIC MODEL IS AN EXPANSION OF POLICE POWERS. ANARCHISTS MUST JOIN SEX WORKERS TO FIGHT AGAINST IT. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Earlier this year, sex workers in Scotland secured a hard-won victory. 
Ash Regan's "Unbuyable" bill was voted down in the first stage, although 
by a margin of just ten votes. The bill was the latest effort by a 
left-leaning politician to introduce client and third party 
criminalisation laws - also known as the Nordic Model - across Britain, 
Northern Ireland having already adopted it in 2015. ---- Sex work - and 
which laws should govern it - is a divisive issue among Anarchists and 
the broader left. Support for the Nordic Model is widespread, including 
among those who identify as communists. Sex workers find ourselves in 
the unenviable position of having to battle against those who should be 
our allies, and who suddenly abandon anti-carceral and borderless ideals 
to support a model that represents a massive expansion of repressive 
policing and state surveillance.

Communist opposition to sex work is generally linked to a fundamental 
opposition to commodification - the process of turning human life and 
activity into objects to be bought and sold. This is something we can 
all get behind. We all experience the profound dehumanisation of a 
culture that treats us as consumers and labourers rather than human 
beings, not to mention the soul-destroying process of monetising what 
might once have simply been a treasured skill or hobby.

Obscenely rich people aside, engaging in any kind of labour for profit 
can never be a free choice under capitalism. This is not unique to sex 
work; none of us have full agency when the alternative is not having a 
roof over our heads or food on the table. Ask any commuter on the tube 
at 7:30am whether they're headed to their office cubicle out of sheer 
free will, and I think we all know the answer.

Where I get lost is casting sex work as somehow unique; the ultimate 
frontier of capitalist intrusion, where the most intimate parts of human 
existence are turned into a market product. "Labour Power" and 
"Personhood", believed to be separate in other areas of work, are here 
deemed indistinguishable, making sex work a particular violation of 
human life and dignity. These strangely romanticised depictions of sex 
are at odds with the reality of human behaviour - people regularly have 
sex for deeply unromantic reasons, and there's nothing wrong with that. 
The naivety of this perspective hints at a lack of much lived experience 
here, and I struggle to engage with it seriously.

Regardless, this shouldn't matter. Even if you insist on holding sex 
work to a unique standard here, anyone on the left should still oppose 
the Nordic Model for what it actually does. It may claim to be about 
abolishing sex work. However, it does not address any of the key drivers 
of sex work - primarily poverty and financial need, as well as 
discrimination against queer and trans people, inaccessible workplaces, 
insufficient welfare support, and those with no recourse to public 
funds. Instead, it simply aims to punish and disrupt people's lives 
enough that they'll stop doing it.

For obvious reasons, this doesn't work. No one can ever be criminalised 
enough that they will stop needing money to survive. But the Nordic 
Model is so much worse than ineffective; it's cruel. The repercussions 
will affect sex workers and non-sex workers alike. Here's the reality of 
what these forms of criminalisation mean.

The systems required to enforce client and third party criminalisation 
laws are inherently those of mass-surveillance. As such, the 
introduction of the Nordic Model would herald an enormous rise in 
digital monitoring and surveillance of private communications, as police 
attempt to ascertain where paid transactional sex is being arranged. 
This means all of us will face greater online intrusion than ever into 
our private correspondence and online activities.

It won't just be online. Police will stake out the locations from which 
people are suspected of selling sex, while they wait to catch and fine 
those involved. This means increased resources for undercover policing, 
CCTV and other covert filming or recording, and general mass intrusion 
into people's personal lives. And tools built ostensibly to catch 
clients are easily repurposed for monitoring any other activities that 
law enforcement doesn't like. Once the state has the power to monitor 
your movements, private transactions and messages for the crime of 
purchasing sex, they can also monitor them for political dissent or 
"illegal" protests.

This surveillance will also be applied at the border, where individuals 
even suspected of sex work can be barred from entering the country - 
essentially providing a gift-wrapped excuse for those who want to see 
borders policed more aggressively. In Norway, Nordic Model laws were 
used to deport migrant sex workers after they approached the police to 
report assault. In Sweden - which pioneered these laws - sex workers are 
deported on vague and unsubstantiated claims of "public order", and new 
amendments to the Aliens Act are set to remove settled status from those 
not supporting themselves by "honest means".

Perhaps the most cynical aspect of the Nordic Model is its calculated 
destruction of collective safety. The criminalisation of third parties 
sees peer support treated as criminal conspiracy. If a sex worker shares 
their earnings with a partner, a parent, or a child, those loved ones 
are viewed as profiting off of sex work. If a worker shares the details 
of their booking with a support network or a safety buddy, that person 
is criminalised as facilitating her sex work. This is a state-mandated 
dismantling of mutual aid and collective care. By criminalising the 
networks we build to protect ourselves, the Nordic Model effectively 
mandates isolation - the most dangerous condition for any worker.

In short, the Nordic Model is a massive expansion of police powers, 
creating a perpetual state of surveillance and intervention to enforce 
these laws. This will affect all of us, but will be disproportionately 
used against already marginalised communities: those who are racialised, 
queer, trans, migrants and disabled. No one should claim to be on the 
left while supporting this.

If you don't like people selling sex, fine. Plenty of sex workers don't 
really like it either. And if you want to talk about fewer people doing 
sex work, then great - let's talk about an actual living wage. Let's 
talk about affordable housing. Let's talk about tackling soaring energy 
prices and food costs. Let's talk about giving migrants full working 
rights and recourse to public funds. Let's talk about better support for 
mothers and people with disabilities.

Not liking sex work or wanting to see fewer people doing sex work should 
never be grounds to support the Nordic Model. We are all doing our best 
to survive capitalism. Sex work and sex workers are not unique in this 
regard and our ranks are comprised of society's poorest and most 
vulnerable, sometimes acting in desperation to survive. The response 
should never be criminalisation. The Nordic model is breathtaking not 
just in its scope, but in its cruelty.

Victory in Scotland has for now been won, and I hope Scotland for 
Decrim's members are taking time to rest and heal after an inspiring but 
no doubt draining campaign. Unfortunately, this won't be the last battle 
against the Nordic Model that sex workers in the UK have to fight. 
Anarchists and the entire political left wing need to get on board, 
before we all find ourselves at the mercy of an ever expanding police state.

Marin Scarlett
Marin is a sex workers' rights activist and can be found on social media 
here @marinscarlett_.

The featured artwork is by Krime an anarchist artist and propagandist 
based in the South West of England, you can find more of their work on 
krime.uk.

Both Marin and Krime donated their commissions to S.A.F.E. (who work to 
to ensure abortion access to the people across Europe who have been 
abandoned by governments and healthcare systems) and SWARM (a sex worker 
led collective based in the UK) respectively. You can support these 
organisations directly here:
supportingabortions.eu/donate
swarmcollective.org/get-involved

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ANARCHIST FEDERATION

https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2026/03/23/a-report-from-nes-10-22-03-26
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